Superior love, and bade the hallow'd fane,
Seat of prophetic truth, Ismenus' name retain. 10
Harmonia's children! ye whose heroine band,
Assembled by the god's command,
At close of day he bids in social state
Pytho and Themis celebrate,
With earth's truth-speaking centre—to proclaim 15
Seven-portall'd Thebes and Cirrha's game,
Where Thrasydæus by the third won crown [1]
Hath his paternal hearth's renown
Exalted where great Pylades' command
(Spartan Orestes' friend) ruled o'er the fertile land. 24 20
Him, when his slaughter'd father lay,
By Clytemnestra's hand subdued,
The nurse Arsinoe stole away
From the dire scene of fraud and blood;
What time with Agamemnon's soul 25
She, whom no pity could control,
Urging the sharp and glittering blade,
Dardanian Priam's daughter hurl'd
Cassandra to th' infernal world,
Where flows sad Acheron through realms of shade. 31 30
Did her to the unhallow'd stroke
Iphigenia's doom provoke,
Who died, far from her native land,
A victim on Euripus' strand?
Or lust of an adulterous bed, 35
- ↑ One by his father, one by his uncle, one by himself. Orestes is called Spartan, (v. 20,) since, although a native of Mycenæ, he was made king of Sparta. The following digression, relating his story, with the adultery of Clytemnestra, &c., is also reprehended by the scholiast as irrelevant to the subject of the ode.
The same narration is made by the shade of Agamemnon to Ulysses in the infernal regions: (Od., xi., 404–434.) Compare the tale as related by Sophocles: (Electra, 94, et seq.)
